What Are Digital Product Passports?
March 2026 · Edmondo Grigolato
The EU ESPR Mandate
The European Union's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) introduces a new requirement that will transform how products are manufactured, sold, and recycled across Europe: the Digital Product Passport (DPP).
A DPP is a structured digital record that accompanies a product throughout its lifecycle, containing information about its materials, manufacturing processes, environmental footprint, repairability, and end-of-life recycling instructions. Starting with priority product categories like batteries, textiles, and electronics, the regulation will progressively expand to cover most products sold in the EU market.
For manufacturers and importers, this means every product will need a unique digital identity — accessible via a simple QR code scan — that provides verified, up-to-date information to consumers, regulators, and recyclers alike.
Why Blockchain?
The DPP requirement creates a fundamental trust challenge: how do you ensure that product data is accurate, hasn't been tampered with, and can be verified by any party in the supply chain?
Traditional centralized databases introduce single points of failure and trust dependencies. If the manufacturer controls the data, how can regulators and consumers trust its accuracy? If a third-party platform hosts the data, what happens when that platform changes its terms or goes offline?
Blockchain technology addresses these challenges directly:
- Immutability — Once product data is recorded on-chain, it cannot be altered or deleted
- Transparency — All supply chain participants can verify data independently
- Decentralization — No single entity controls the product record
- Interoperability — Standardized on-chain data can be read by any compliant system
Implementation Approach
At Grigolato.it, we've built a production-grade DPP solution through ProjectSCT (Supply Chain Transparency), demonstrating how blockchain-backed Digital Product Passports work in practice:
- Sui blockchain for high-performance, low-cost on-chain product registration with sub-second finality
- Move smart contracts with a linear type system that prevents common vulnerabilities by design
- GS1 Digital Link standards (GTIN/SGTIN) for global product identification via QR codes
- TOGAF ADM architecture ensuring the solution aligns with business requirements and scales across stakeholder groups
The platform serves four distinct stakeholder groups — consumers (B2C), business partners (B2B), logistics providers (3PL), and sustainability reporters (GRI) — each with tailored views of the same trusted product data.
What This Means for Your Business
If you manufacture or import products sold in the EU, DPP compliance is not a question of "if" but "when." Starting preparation now — assessing your product data infrastructure, supply chain visibility, and technology readiness — gives you a competitive advantage over organizations that wait for enforcement deadlines.
Enterprise architects play a critical role in this transition: designing the data architecture, integration patterns, and governance frameworks that make DPP compliance sustainable and scalable rather than a costly last-minute retrofit.